State v. Kirkland’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[C]onduct which would otherwise constitute any crime other than a class A felony or murder is justifiable and not criminal when it is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury which is about to occur by reason of a situation occasioned or developed through no fault of the actor, and which is of such gravity that, according to ordinary standards of intelligence and morality, the desirability of avoiding the injury outweighs the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented by the statute defining the crime charged.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Diener · State v. Vandiver

2. “1) a present and imminent danger, the definition of danger being based upon the facts of a defendant’s confinement and the imminence of the danger not being solely based on a time interval but upon the entire fact situation; 2) exhaustion of remedies or evidence that attempts to do so had been futile and that the imminence of the danger of threatened harm is such that no alternative is available; 3) evidence that the escapee did not use force or violence against innocent persons in perfecting the escape; 4) and a duty on the part of the escapee to surrender when the threatened danger has been avoided. State v. Kirkland, 684 S.W.2d 402, 405 [3] (Mo.App. 1984).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Simmons